


Creeper Alert

by A_Diamond



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Awkward Flirting, Deputy Stiles Stilinski, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Past Kate Argent/Derek Hale, Podfic, Podfic Available, Single Parent Derek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-13 08:28:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12980115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Diamond/pseuds/A_Diamond
Summary: Stiles wasn’t far from the park when the first call came in. On the face of it, there was nothing too out of the ordinary: a citizen concerned about a twenty- to thirty-year-old man hanging out at a park, staring at kids. It was the kind ofthis guy seems like a creepercall they got at least a few times a week.The guy in question stood against a nearby tree, arms crossed in a leather jacket that looked way too hot—warm—for the weather, and a five o’clock shadow that was more of an eleven o’clock shadow dusting the edges of a terrifying scowl.It was a good look for him, honestly.





	Creeper Alert

**Author's Note:**

  * For [idoobeg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/idoobeg/gifts).



> Now with a [podfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16637171) by [onlymorelove](http://onlymorelove.tumblr.com/) created for Fandom Trumps Hate 2018!

Stiles wasn’t far from the park when the first call came in. On the face of it, there was nothing too out of the ordinary: a citizen concerned about a twenty- to thirty-year-old man hanging out at a park, staring at kids. It was the kind of _this guy seems like a creeper_ call they got at least a few times a week, and for as long as Stiles had been listening to police scanners—his whole life—none of them had ever turned out to be anything. But they had to check, because that chance of _what if_ was too terrible to risk.

As he pulled into the parking lot, dispatch let him know that they had three other callers on the same man. That was getting into unusual territory, enough so that Parrish radioed in to say he was on his way for backup.

The playground area was just inside the park, busy on a sunny weekend day. Despite the crowd, Stiles immediately picked out the guy in question. He stood against a nearby tree, arms crossed in a leather jacket that looked way too hot—warm—for the weather, and a five o’clock shadow that was more of an eleven o’clock shadow dusting the edges of a terrifying scowl.

It was a good look for him, honestly. But Stiles could see why people had been concerned. People like the group of parents, mostly women, clustered together and eyeing him. Dude looked downright murderous. His gaze was fixed on the play equipment, and he didn’t notice Stiles’s arrival.

Some of the others, did, though, and one of the women hurried over to him, all the while shooting nervous glances back at the man.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” she said. “That pervert has been here for half an hour already.”

The man’s eyes snapped to them, even though he shouldn’t have been able to hear her from that far away. His irritated look, impossibly, intensified; it made him, impossibly, even more attractive. He pushed off the tree with what appeared to be just a flex of his shoulder blades, since his arms didn’t uncross, and called, “Alanna!”

His voice didn’t come out as gruff as Stiles had expected, but there was still a growl to it that had Stiles reminding himself that picking people up on the job was twelve kinds of terrible idea. Especially people who might yet turn out to be creepy child murderers.

But the child who sprang down and ran toward him didn’t look very murdered. She looked like a perfectly happy eleven-ish-year-old with a strong resemblance to the man, as a matter of fact.

Racing up to the man, she matched his scowl with her own, down to the crossed arms. In response to something the girl said, the man nodded at Stiles and his complaining witness and suddenly Stiles found himself on the wrong end of a shockingly powerful glare from a kid half his size.

Returning it with the best smile he could muster under the circumstances, Stiles waved at the man and his apparent daughter. They speared him with twin unimpressed looks and his fingers curled back down as they turned to go.

“Are you just going to let him take her?” the woman demanded.

“Yep.” Stiles grinned at her with a little more sincerity. “There’s nothing going on that gives me any cause to stop them. Nothing wrong with a man taking care of his kid.”

“You don’t know she’s really his daughter, or with him willingly, or—”

“Ma’am, she looked happy and healthy to me and that’s all I can do. I’m not going to ruin their day any more just because you don’t believe in male caregivers. And you’re not gonna bother them if you see them here again.”

She gaped at him but he ignored it, getting on the radio to tell Parrish not to bother coming out. When he returned to his car, the man and his daughter were standing at their own vehicle, a boxy silver SUV, arguing. Or just staring at each other.

Then they stopped staring at each other to stare at him. The girl—Alanna, Stiles was a trained observer and pretty sure that shout had been her name—started toward him with a surly pre-teen glower, but her dad stopped her with a hand on her shoulder and nodded her into the car. She went, but not happily, and her dad followed without another look in Stiles’s direction.

Out of curiosity, because there was nothing to stop him and it was even technically his job, Stiles ran the guy’s plate as they pulled away. The state database came back with nothing more useful than the fact that the car had been sold a week ago. Apparently the registration details hadn’t made it into the system yet.

Oh well, it didn’t matter that much. If they were new in town and sticking around, Stiles was pretty sure he’d get more creeper calls about the guy’s murder-face.

-

Sure enough, he got a call the very next afternoon about a guy lurking at a school bus stop. He didn’t make the connection right away; even a town the size of Beacon Hills could have multiple creeps. He knew for a fact that Beacon Hills did have its share of weirdos, really, because it was his job to deal with them.

Stiles got to the bus stop before the bus did. He pulled over at the end of the block and walked up, quickly identifying the regular group of parents. And also the man hiding in the bushes, who wasn’t so much hiding in the bushes as he was standing in plain view on the sidewalk and glaring directly at Stiles.

“Really?” he asked before Stiles could get a word in. “I’m waiting for my daughter.”

His eyebrows looked like they wanted to murder Stiles, and his bared, muscular forearms probably could’ve accomplished it; but he didn’t sound angry enough to follow through. A little irritated, maybe, but mostly his voice came out like a tired sigh.

It punched Stiles unexpectedly in the squishy inner parts of his chest, and he spread his hands in a peaceable, helpless gesture. “I don’t make the 9-1-1 calls, dude, I just respond to them.”

The man’s eyes narrowed, then swept over the others gathered several feet away. They edged back nervously, a few looking at Stiles like he’d betrayed their trust and shot their dogs. Then the man’s shoulders slumped and he seemed to collapse in on himself, giving in to the exhaustion Stiles had heard before. Stiles was annoyed on his behalf, and for a moment he couldn’t stop himself from displaying that annoyance by shooting his own glare at the clique of parents.

The guy had probably just moved to town, with his new car and his newly enrolled daughter, and Beacon Hills was supposed to be a more welcoming place than that.

“Look,” Stiles told him more sincerely, “this is a small town. People get a little edgy about strangers. Give them a bit of time to get used to you, maybe work on not looking quite so cantankerous quite so often, it’ll settle down.”

The man’s lip twitched. “ _Cantankerous_?”

“Cantankerous.”

“I guess I don’t have to ask how your SAT prep is going.” His voice was dry and grumpy still, but he had that little tick up at the corner of his mouth that meant Stiles could count it as a win. Even at his own expense.

Keeper of the peace and one-man welcoming committee; that was Stiles. And if he thought about digging up the guy’s address to bake him—buy him a welcome pie, it had nothing to do with how burning hot he was when smirking.

Besides, with Stiles’s luck, he was probably a straight, happily married stay-at-home dad.

Speaking of Stiles’s luck, the bus chose that moment to arrive with an ungodly screech of brakes that made him wince and the man grind his jaw and clench his fists halfway up to his shoulders in what looked like an aborted attempt to cover his ears.

Alanna was the first out of the folding doors when they opened, and she stormed between Stiles and her dad. “Leave him alone!” she demanded. “It’s supposed to be better here, why do you keep harassing us?”

Stiles was ready to defend himself, but the man spoke before he could. “It’s okay, Alanna. I was having a nice talk with Deputy...” The man’s eyes went to Stiles’s name patch and widened slightly. “Stilinski. You’re the sheriff’s kid.”

“Uh. Yeah? Do you always look up local law enforcement figures when you move to a new place?”

Deadpan, he answered, “Yes. But this also isn’t exactly a new place. I grew up here, and I remember him. Derek Hale.”

Stiles took the offered hand, feeling like he was in a dream. Which was why, instead of his name, he said, “Oh, shit.”

-

Stiles saw Derek again twice more that week. The third sighting, he was on duty and drove past Derek on the street. Nothing weird about that. The only reason he even noticed was that the Hales had been on his mind since Derek had introduced himself. None of the surviving family—all two of them—had been seen or heard from since the fire.

He remembered Derek and his older sister, Laura, sitting in the sheriff’s office, looking so lost and young even though they’d both been older than him. There definitely hadn’t been a baby, so Derek must have acquired his daughter after that. But not much after, if Stiles was right about her age.

And now Derek was back, apparently for good.

“Are you going to be trouble, Derek Hale?” Stiles muttered to himself as he idled at a red light, watching Derek cross next to him.

Almost as if he’d heard, Derek turned his head and raised an eyebrow at Stiles. If he were answering Stiles’s question, the answer would be a resounding _yes_. Not trouble for Beacon Hills, though; just for Stiles. Flustered at Derek’s intense stare, Stiles bit his lip and tried to smile around it. When he waved, he was pretty sure Derek snorted before shaking his head and continuing on his way.

Stiles thumped his head against the steering wheel. “Trouble,” he repeated.

-

The real turning point in Stiles’s doom came in as another call, but not a creeper alert; the report was for an all-out disturbance in the dairy section. Nothing physical yet, but escalating. Stiles flipped on his lights and siren. While he was still on the way, dispatch came out with descriptions of the involved parties:

The first man was known to the store employee calling in, and to Stiles. Gerard Argent was a grumpy old bastard, but he’d never started a brawl over milk before. Not even when he’d been trying to scare off his granddaughter’s high school boyfriend, which still irked Stiles because Scott and Allison had been adorable.

The other subject was also male; about thirty, dark hair, facial hair, leather jacket. It could’ve been any number of people, but somehow Stiles suspected he knew who he was going to find locked in fisticuffs with Gerard.

“There’s a young girl associated with the second man,” Kennedy said on the radio, which settled it in Stiles’s mind. “She’s also yelling at Gerard.”

By the time Stiles reached the store a couple minutes later, things were a little quieter, but only a little, and not much better otherwise. He heard Gerard before he saw him, a persistent bellow that made the three employees pointing him in the right direction pretty redundant. His was the only voice, and Stiles briefly hoped he’d finally lost it and was just yelling at himself next to the eggs. No such luck; Stiles rounded a corner to see him raging at Derek still.  
  
Derek wasn’t responding because he was holding Alanna to his chest and whispering to her while he glared. From the way her shoulders shook, Stiles couldn’t be sure if she was crying or furious, but he didn’t care just then.

“She’s my granddaughter!” Gerard was yelling when Stiles put himself between them.

“Gerard,” he said forcefully before the man could get another word in. “Take a breath and a step back, huh? Tell me what’s going on.”

“This criminal ran off with my granddaughter when she was born and has hidden her from her family ever since. Now they’re finally back, but he’s refusing to let us see her!”

Gerard looked ready to go on, and Derek’s whispers had stopped but his mouth opened to snarl something. Stiles held up a hand to forestall both of them.

“He’s her father?”

Both men nodded, even if Gerard’s was grudging.

“You got a court order to show me saying she shouldn’t be with him?”

Face like a sour lemon, Gerard didn’t answer that. Derek did. “No. Alanna’s mother is dead and I have full custody.”

“Well,” Stiles said, trying for a lot more cheer than he actually felt, “sounds like that’s that. If you have a compelling case for custody as a grandparent, you can petition the court. You cannot—look at me, Gerard, this is important and I will absolutely rejoice in arresting you if you don’t listen. You cannot kidnap her in a fucking supermarket!”

Behind him, his dad groaned, “Stiles.”

Stiles hadn’t heard him coming up, but he stood by his statement even in the face of his boss’s disapproval. Gerard didn’t respond to anything subtler than direct threats, and Stiles didn’t want a repeat of this scene. He was just using the tools available to him to accomplish that.

His goal was also helped along by the fact that his dad hadn’t been the only one to overhear, judging by the way Chris Argent appeared on his other side and asked, in a very similar tone, “You _what?_ ”

Now, Chris also hadn’t been the biggest fan of his daughter sneaking around with Stiles’s best friend, and Stiles might have found his bad side by running interference a few too many times. But that had been ages ago, and they’d come to understand each other better in the intervening years. He liked to think that Chris appreciated his good work for the sheriff’s department and how that showcased his maturity.

Plus, he hadn’t hidden Allison in his closet for almost a decade.

So when Stiles nodded at him and greeted, “Chris,” Chris nodded back and said, “Stiles.” Then, looking like it pained him, “Derek.”

It briefly took Stiles by surprise, but of course if Alanna was Gerard’s granddaughter, that would make her Chris’s niece. And there was definitely some bad family drama going on there, because the snarl Derek responded with made Stiles flinch even though it wasn’t directed at him. With the hum of the refrigerated aisle around them, it almost sounded like Derek was growling.

Whatever the hostility was about, Chris didn’t fight it. He just raised his hands and ducked his head slightly, and said, “Okay.” Like he was soothing a scared, aggressive animal: “Okay, okay. We’re going. But if you ever—”

Derek ducked his head against Alanna’s, pointedly ignoring Chris’s words, so Chris gave up with a sigh.

“The sheriff has my number,” he finished instead. “That’s all.”

But on his way out, after all but shoving a grumbling Gerard in front of him, Chris stopped next to Stiles and asked, “Do something for me? When things have calmed down, tell him I’m sorry for—everything. And that if he gives me a chance, or Allie if he can’t trust me. We’re here if he needs us. We’d like to give him a family, not take it away. Will you tell him?”

Uncomfortably contrite wasn’t a look that Stiles had ever seen or expected to see from Chris, and he found himself desperately wanting to know what had happened to make Chris look like that, while simultaneously hoping he would never have to find out. It was a complicated feeling. The warm, protective feeling he got looking at Derek and Alanna was a lot less complicated. Bound to complicate his life, but the feeling itself was easy.

It also made it easy to step forward and put himself between Chris and Derek, just like he had with Gerard, even though Chris wasn’t the same kind of threat his father had been. “They’ll know how to find you.”

Chris nodded, resigned, and left. His offer sounded like a heartfelt one, something he wanted for Derek and Alanna just as much as for himself, but if Derek wasn’t ready for it then Stiles wasn’t going to push him or let Chris push him. And not just because Stiles was starting to think about what a family for Derek Hale would look like.

Right about the same time that Stiles realized what he was signing himself up for, his dad took him by the arm and turned him around; away from the Hales. He’d seen enough infatuation to recognize it on Stiles’s face, and he knew better than to try to talk him out of it. But he wasn’t going to let Stiles do anything about it yet.

“You head on back to the station,” he told Stiles. “I need to have a word with Derek and take care of things here.”

Stiles protested, “I can take care of things. I can word!” But his dad gave him a look, and he obeyed without further argument.

When he glanced back at Derek and Alanna one last time, they were both looking a little more settled. Alanna’s eyes and cheeks were tinged red, but if there had been tears he couldn’t see any sign of them left; just her moody kid glare, albeit a little more wobbly and less intimidating than her dad’s.

Her dad, though—Derek wasn’t glaring at all. He was watching Stiles with a soft, open confusion that was heartbreakingly similar to the expression Stiles remembered from so many years ago. He almost couldn’t take walking away from it, but his dad pushed gently and promised, “I’ll take care of them, son. Go on.”

-

He saw Derek around a few more times after that. Not in any official capacity, Stiles wasn’t working and Derek wasn’t being creepy. Just around. At the store, or the park, or once at the library when Derek was browsing the YA section; maybe for Alanna, maybe for himself, Stiles wasn’t going to judge.

He’d kind of bite his lip and wave, and Derek would kind of smile and duck his head. It was good, a nice, easy flirtation, and Stiles was content to let it stay there a while. He’d grown since his last life-changing crush. Sure, he was still obsessing a little, daydreaming about what life with Derek and Alanna would be like, but he kept it to himself aside from the small, hopefully unthreatening moments he shared with Derek.

Stiles wasn’t going to push.

Apparently, the universe had other plans.

Because he got alerted early on a bright, gorgeous weekday afternoon that there was a man lying face down in the grass at the edge of the Preserve, shirtless and possibly not breathing. He drove with lights and siren, because he was halfway across town and the caller had been driving by, unable or unwilling to stop and check on the man. Even doubling the speed limit, it took several long minutes.

The first thing he observed when he got there was that the man in question was definitely not dead, dying, or passed out. He was sitting up and staring at Stiles’s car like Stiles was the crazy one for driving up like someone might be dying, when he was the one who’d made people think there might be someone dying in the first place.

The second thing he noticed, very shortly after the first, was that the man in question was Derek. Shirtless Derek Hale with abs for miles, and that was just unfair, especially with the way he had to lift a hand and squint a bit against the glare of the sun to look up at Stiles. Then he smiled, that secret little twitch at the corner of his mouth that only seemed to pop up when he caught Stiles staring at him in public.

It was almost as magical as the smile Stiles had spied on him once when he thought no one was watching him watch Alanna. And that memory was what did him in, really, because Stiles had strong feelings about single fathers. So when Derek asked, “Something I can help you with, Deputy?” with that smug flirty smirk—he knew what he looked like—Stiles had no chance.

“I’d like to kiss you,” he said.

Derek’s eyebrows shot up past the hand shading his eyes, and even though Stiles was usually good in a crisis, great in a crisis, his whole job was about dealing with crises, he sort of panicked. And when he panicked, he rambled.

“I mean, that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because someone driving by thought you were dead, but you’re obviously not dead, and I just—I want to kiss you. I’ve wanted to kiss you for weeks, but I was trying to not be overbearing about it because you just moved, and you have your daughter—and that’s awesome, I know how hard it is. I mean I was the kid, not the dad, but I, my dad did so much for me and you’re so good with her. And we met, the way we met, I didn’t want it to seem like I was being creepy, you know? So I was gonna wait, but you’re here and shirtless and I just can’t. Okay? I can’t with you anymore unless there’s kissing.”

“Okay,” said Derek.

That sounded like a good thing, but Stiles couldn’t be entirely sure what it meant. “Okay?”

“Okay.” Standing with a breathtaking display of rippling musculature, Derek walked up to him. “I’d like to kiss you, too.”

“Good. Great. How do you feel about dating? Because I’d really like that, too.”

“I have a daughter,” he said as though that weren’t something Stiles was acutely aware of and had soft, squishy thoughts about. “We come as a set, if you date me, you’re dating her, too.”

It was probably a sign of how far gone Stiles already was that he didn’t even call Derek out on the awkward phrasing. He just said, “Yeah, I know. I’m in. You and Alanna and your matching scowly faces that aren’t nearly as scary as you think they are.”

Derek inched closer, but still didn’t move in all the way. “There’s a lot about us you don’t know.”

“You’ll tell me when you’re ready. I might have secrets too, you know.” He leaned forward until there was only breath between his lips and Derek’s, but waited for Derek to make the final move.

When he did, the careful brush of his mouth was the sweetest thing Stiles had ever felt.

*

They didn’t get a lot of dramatic crime in Beacon Hills. Sheriff Stilinski liked to think he could take some of the credit for that; him and the deputies he trained. They were a top-notch department, despite being a small one.

Unfortunately, that size was the reason he was the only one on duty when reports came in of a suspicious figure scaling the fire escape of a townhouse. His heart gave an unhappy jump as he recognized the address as Stiles’s building, and kept ratcheting painfully when Stiles didn’t answer his hastily dialled call and then an update came in that the person had climbed in a window of the third unit. Stiles’s unit.

Halfway to a heart attack, the sheriff pulled onto the curb in front of the townhouse. Stiles’s window was dark, but partially open. He raced up the steps, alternately digging through his pockets to find his copy of the spare key and pounding on the door with the flat of his hand, yelling, “Police! Open the door!”

He had to switch off those tasks because his other hand was on his gun and not leaving it.

His fingers had just closed around his personal keyring, which he was going to be keeping separate from the work sets in the future, when the door was flung open by his flustered but unharmed son. “What the hell, Dad?” Stiles demanded as the sheriff grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out on the landing.

“Someone climbed in your window. Stay here, I’m going to check the house—”

“No no no, wait!” Stiles wrapped both hands around the sheriff’s wrist—his dominant wrist, the one ready to pull his weapon—and clung on to stop him from going inside. “It’s okay. Dad, it’s fine, I’m fine, that was Derek. We’re both totally fine.”

Sure enough, Stiles’s boyfriend of six months appeared in the light of the hall, coming out of the door he knew led to his son’s bedroom, looking sheepish and just as dishevelled as Stiles, now that the sheriff took the time to look at him more closely. Then he noticed the redness around Stiles’s mouth and the rash blooming down his neck and stopped looking closely.

“Seriously?” the sheriff snapped. “You almost killed me just now, I hope you realize that. What the hell were you thinking?”

“He was just trying to surprise me.” Stiles nudged his shoulder, and when the sheriff raised an eyebrow at him, he nodded toward Derek—who looked so miserably guilty, genuinely distraught over upsetting him, that he relented.

Sighing and dragging a hand down his face, he said, “Yeah, well. Find less creepy romantic gestures, okay?”

Derek nodded seriously; Stiles snickered, because he’d raised him wrong somewhere along the line. The sheriff cuffed the back of his head lightly.

“Where’s Alanna?”

“Spending the night at Allison’s. I left her there after dinner with Chris.”

Seeing that look on Derek’s face, the sheriff realized, was worth all his anxiety driving over; which was saying a lot, because it had been terrifying. He was smiling softly, openly, but there was a surprise to it, too. Like he’d never believed he would find family again after everything that happened. The sheriff didn’t blame him for not expecting it to come from the Argents, but connecting with Alanna’s uncle and cousin had done a world of good for both of them.

So had Stiles, so maybe he hadn’t done so badly with the kid after all.

“All right,” he said, “you two have a nice date night. But if I get any more calls, someone’s spending the night in lockup. Got it?”

“Got it,” promised Stiles. “We’ll be safe in here if you be safe out there.”

He wrinkled his nose at that. “More than I need to know, son.”

Stiles’s laughter followed him all the way to the car.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Creeper Alert](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16637171) by [only_more_podfucs (only_more_love)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/only_more_love/pseuds/only_more_podfucs)




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